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International Outlander

International broadcast rights to Outlander are owned by Sony and Sony is handling the negotiations outside of the US. Canadian rights have been acquired by Showcase.

If you are not familiar with Chris Parnell, Senior Vice President at Sony, you should be. He is a great guy and totally committed to Outlander. He’s our strongest ally. He has complete faith in the team responsible for selling the rights to Outlander worldwide. Chris is very well aware of the eagerness of Outlander fans to advance all things Outlander worldwide and has promised to enlist us when fan-based promotional efforts are needed.

UK – On November 13, we did a Twitter event #UKTVNeedsOutlander. It was a great success, trending in both the US and UK for over 40 minutes, and even Diana participated. Shortly after the event, an entertainment blogger in the UK referenced the Twitter event and said that it is very common for UK rights to be bought shortly before US-produced series air in the US. On January 6, The Daily Star, a tabloid, casually mentioned that Outlander will air on Sky in the UK. It has not been mentioned anywhere since, so the accuracy of the report is unknown at this time.
Summary – holding pattern here.

Australia – The cable company there, Foxtel, and the Foxtel channel most likely to air Outlander, SoHo, have been fairly responsive to fan communications. Initially, their position was “Outlander is a Starz series. They do not do well here. It will be expensive. We will make a decision when/if it is a hit in the US.” They did say that social media efforts could positively influence a buying decision. We held a Twitter event on December 8, #NZOZTVNeedOutlander (New Zealand and Australia TV Need Outlander), and both Foxtel and SoHo favorited, retweeted and replied to our tweets. A week later, we followed up with an e-mail campaign. Foxtel replied that they had forwarded our interest to their channels team but that a decision is months away. Since then, their replies to e-mails have indicated some annoyance, so the best tack to take in Australia is to keep general social media activity high, but to not target Foxtel and SoHo directly. We have made some as-yet unsuccessful efforts to trend on Twitter there. Recruitment of Australian Outlander fans to Twitter and Facebook groups are key here. One suggested Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NZOZTVNeedOutlander/
Summary – General social media efforts are encouraged but direct contact with broadcasters will likely be counterproductive at this time.

New Zealand – Outlander fans in New Zealand have been vocal enough that Sky/Prime channel has added a statement about Outlander to the FAQ section on their website, stating “There are a couple of channels looking at being able to purchase the new series Outlander, but we have nothing to confirm at this time.” Again, recruitment of New Zealand fans to Twitter and Facebook groups would be helpful. The numbers needed to trend in New Zealand are pretty low, so a relatively small group of fans could have a great impact.
Summary – as in Australia, keeping up the social media activity is our best bet at this time.

Russia, Georgia, the CIS and the Baltic States – Per deadline.com:
“Starz Worldwide Distribution Inks With Russia’s Amedia
In other Starz news, Starz Worldwide Distribution and Russian TV producer/pay-TV broadcaster and VOD service operator Amedia have entered a multi-year, multiplatform content licensing and distribution deal for current and future Starz original series. The deal also covers other movie and TV content that will be brought to audiences in Russia, Georgia, the CIS and the Baltic States. Amedia will have exclusive pay-TV and SCOD rights to such series as The White Queen, Magic City and Michael Bay’s Black Sails. It also covers future series including Power. Amedia plans to broadcast episodes of the original series the day after their respective U.S. premieres.”
Summary – Outlander is not mentioned specifically, but is certainly a “future Starz original series.” This looks like a done deal for Outlander to reach a huge potential audience. (Feel free to squee.)

China – Boy, do we want China! Again, per deadline.com: The Ellen DeGeneres Show is now available on-demand via online video service provider Sohu Video, subtitled in Chinese and delivered within 48 hours of the original U.S. broadcast.
We will be crafting a campaign to get Outlander exposure on Ellen to get the first foot in the door in China. Keep alert for updates on this effort.

Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, Italy and Latin America – A small number of fans have reached out to us for help in bringing Outlander to the attention of broadcasters. We are more than willing to help. We need e-mail addresses and Twitter handles for all likely prospects in these areas. If you are a fan who can help us with research, please contact us. This, of course, holds true for fans in any country not mentioned above. The success of Outlander worldwide is our only goal.

One last note:
As Outlander is beloved world-wide, Outlander Ambassador has been visited by fans from around the globe.

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33 thoughts on “International Outlander”

Re: info on parts of Latin America. We live in Costa Rica (Central America) and subscribe to SKY satellite television service, based out of Mexico. I’m not sure of all SKY’s countries and programming, but we have the option here (which I just used) to pay for premium channels like HBO. Additional premium channels under the brand “Moviecity” seem to carry Starz content. We were able to watch the 1st episode of Black Sails one day after the United States premier. It was subtitled in Spanish, but with an English soundtrack. (Spartacus, The White Queen, and other Starz offerings have also been shown on the Moviecity channels.) Hope you find this information helpful!

We don’t have any information on any potential deals for Outlander in France at this time.
France falls under the “any other countries not mentioned above.” If French fans can identify the networks most likely to air Outlander and get us the networks’ Twitter handles and e-mail addresses, we will be more than happy to add France to the next trend event.

Hi there! I am an Outlander fan living in France! I think that Canal + (Canal Play, Canal Sat, etc.) may be the most likely outlet because they are showing Spartacus from Starz right now. Their twitter handles are @canalplus and @canalplay (couldn’t find an email contact).

I can’t tell you how much you will enjoy having a Twitter account yourself. I made my very strongest case for Outlander fans joining Twitter here tonight: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ReaderDG/ Please come join the group and follow us. We’ll show you around Twitter and you will be forever grateful to us. Thanks so much for the lead on SVT. Scandinavia is one of our priorities. (I’m 1/2 Swede, 1/4 Norwegian, 1/8 Swede-Finn and 1/8 Dane – so 100% Scandinavian. Do you have any idea how rare that is in an American? Answer – really rare.)

For Denmark I think this will be the best bet:https://twitter.com/TV3DK
But I think they need to publish the books in danish, too few danes read in english. We don’t even have a danish Outlander fansite right now… Maybe I should start one… hmmmm

I’ve already looked into whether there is a Danish translation…. Not at the moment.
I’ve started a Danish Facebook group (Outlander Denmark), but have touble finding any danish fans (We’re 3 members of the group :S ). I’ve announce the start of the danish group in other international groups (with link) and I’ve tweeted about it, with no luck.
I’ve never made a homepage before (hence the FB group), so I would have no idea where to start.

I just found another possibility for all of Scandinavia
@HBOnordic has bought the rights to Black Sails. I think this would be a great bet for all the nordic countrys. If they want Black Sails, then Outlander should have a great possibility there as well.
Oh and I did start a Facebook group… and made an official OutlanderDK Twitter profil <— still have a lot to learn on that one LOL

Thanks for the information. I have been following the production of the series, mostly to take my mind off the delayed publication date of the book. It recently occurred to me that the series now has equal anticipation fever (Heughligans and Catriots are terms that now seem as familiar as Sassenach) and I had better figure out what TV channel I might need to add in time for its release.

We tweeted @HBOnordic as part of our last effort. We’re adding @HBO_fi to the list this time. Join us on May 19 8-10 pm UTC + 3 to tweet #WorldwideTVNeedsOutlander and please e-mail, tweet, Facebook message and snail mail your networks in the meantime to ask them to make sure that they have a representative see Outlander at the LA Screenings. Thanks!